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Well, Windows is looking like the best "linux distro" at this point, despite it not being free, but mostly widely available to most people.

EDIT: OK downvoters, so what's the most popular operating system that has Linux on it? pretty sure now it is Windows.

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Do we have usage stats for WSL? I did a quick google search and the only thing I found was a laughably biased article claiming only around 150k people used WSL1. Just because Windows has a much larger userbase does not mean that WSL is seeing a lot of usage. It's very possible (and in my estimation likely) that the numbers are not even close.

Linux on the desktop numbers please? It's been known for "pure/native" Linux users to chant this phrase, yet it seems that Windows has achieved this.

I will see in the future lots of tutorials, guides, software, company support, etc covering not just your regular Linux but also WSL, since it's much easier to access rather than installing yet another Linux distro directly on hardware just to try Linux software.

Wait, what has Windows achieved?

My point was that you can't claim the 100 million+ Windows userbase as being the largest Linux distribution, because almost none of those people (proportionally) are actually using WSL.

I don't think we have the usage numbers for WSL. I don't think we have the usage numbers for Linux desktop either. I personally would be surprised if WSL was the largest Linux distro, but either way it's not a claim one can make because we don't have the numbers.

> Wait, what has Windows achieved?

It has achieved Linux on the Windows desktop without dual booting, all unified, download whatever distro you want.

We used to use Virtual Box but Oracle.... our company wants to never have any Oracle products on any of our stuff. AT least with wsl we don't need to worry about that.

Right! Distribution of apps is about where the user lives, and that's Windows. Devs will be able to live in Linux and be happy and their apps will simply work in Windows and users don't care. It's win-win-win for devs, users, and MS.

> what's the most popular operating system that has Linux on it? pretty sure now it is Windows

It depends what you call “Linux” obviously, but android runs on top of a [forked] Linux Kernel.

It's still Linux kernel though. Linux is far more machines than windows. Embedded computers and phones are computers too. If you're talking desktops and laptops of course windows is in the lead by a huge amount.

Which is meaningless for userspace apps, as Linux kernel isn't part of official Android NDK stable APIs.

Android? And with Android x86 you can run it on PC's too. For people who just browse and check emails, it's a pretty decent alternative.

Numbers for people who run Android on PCs?

No idea. But Fosshub gives an idea about its popularity:

- Android-x86: 8,352,565 Downloads

- RemixOS: 4,623,342 Downloads

- Phoenix OS: 180,898 Downloads

- Openthos: 166,697 Downloads

Is this of all time? pretty sure you don't want to see all time download stats of Windows 10 on desktop...